They're at it Again

It's 1:00am and I stumble out of bed in the dark and head to the bathroom. Shouldn't have had that extra glass of water before bed. I close the door to the bathroom and flip on the light. As I'm sitting there pondering the meaning of life and minding my own business, I see some movement in the bathtub and the hairs raise on the back of my neck. It's a big bad wolf spider, and it's climbing out of the tub.

I'm mid-stream when this is all happening and I finish my business as quickly as possible so I can get out of the way of my quickly approaching attacker. I'm ill equipped in my sleeping garb and bare feet. I look around me straining to find some sort of weapon. Seth is sleeping soundly in the room next to me, unaware of the terrifying event taking place.

I grab the first viable option I see: a can of hairspray. I stand back and spray the emerging spider and it falls back into the bottom of the tub. I rush forward as fast as possible and turn the water on, furiously trying to splash this huge monster in an attempt to wash it back down the dark drain where it surely came from.

But, to my horror, I am too slow. He has escaped my drowning attempts and made his way over to the shower curtain. I try to pull it away before it can climb up and into the curtain's protective folds, but again I am too late.

For several minutes I dart forward and back, pulling at the outside curtain, trying futilely to find the chill inducing Houdini. After a few tries I finally catch a glimpse of the spider. He is half-way up the curtain. I jump back and grab the hairspray again. I pelt the curtain with the spray, but it does nothing. The attacker is safely tucked back into one of the large folds in the curtain. And then I lose him again.

I stand there on the cold floor frozen in fear. What am I going to do? I can't just let this spider get away. He is sure to attack me again in the morning and I will never sleep knowing there is a large hairy wolf spider roaming freely. I make a final decision. I need reinforcements.

I open the door to the bathroom and let the light shine into the bedroom. Seth is lying on his back and I can't tell if he is still asleep or not. I slowly climb onto the bed on all fours, staring down at him, studying his eyelids to see if they are cracked open. Suddenly Seth is startled awake by my presence. "What's going on? What time is it?" he says in a cranky voice, obviously disturbed from a restful state. "THERE'S A BIG GIANT SPIDER IN THE BATHROOM AND IT'S LOST IN THE SHOWER CURTAIN AND I NEED YOU TO KILL IT!" I say in desperation. My knight in shining armor immediately gets out of the warm cocoon of soft bedding and heads into the bright bathroom to rid me of my attacker.

I tell him the spider is near the top of the inside curtain and he pulls it open to look. Suddenly the spider climbs over the top of the shower rod and is just inches away from Seth. "AH!! IT'S RIGHT THERE! IT'S RIGHT THERE!" I half-scream. Seth steps back in a non-phased manner and grabs a couple sheets of toilet paper. Toilet Paper. This brave brave man is using toilet paper to kill a WOLF SPIDER. He grabs the spider and then opens the tissue to make sure the spider was killed/captured. It is still alive and starts climbing out, but no matter, he nonchalantly wraps it back up again. "THROW IN IT IN TOILET QUICK!!" I yell, obviously more alarmed than Seth. He slowly opens the lid and throws it in. "HURRY FLUSH IT!!" Seth, flushes the toilet and the spider is gone. "You're my hero" I say as I hug my sleepy husband. He chuckles at my insanity and climbs back in bed. I climb in after him and snuggle up. This is my spider killer. My wonderful spider killing husband.

My Biggest Fan

For any of you familiar with the blogging world, Google Analytics is a pretty cool tool. I check my Analytics account every morning to see how many people visited my blog and where they come from.

I've had Analytics set up on my blog for over a month now and most cities that show up are familiar to me in one way or another... at least the ones with higher traffic. I expect visitors from Idaho and Utah cities because that's where most of my family and friends live. But there are always a lot of visits from Palo Alto, California and I couldn't for the life of me figure out who that visitor could be. How could I not know who was visiting me from Palo Alto when it was so often the #1 traffic producer for my blog?

Call it an early morning brain peak or months of subconscious deep thinking, but this morning as I was checking my Analytics account when I first got to work, I had a revelation. Palo Alto was ME. The company I work for has a major site in Palo Alto and their Internet connection must be routed through there. All along this top visitor to my blog was ME. Not some random adoring fan. Not some stranger who stumbled across my blog and now visited on a daily basis because of my wonderful wit and charm. It was ME. ME and my addiction to my own blog.

Of course instead of keeping this information to myself I chose to post it for all my readers to see. What do you expect? My ego has just been crushed.... I've got to do something to build it up again. And what better way to boost an ego than to write a new post to suck in more readers? I feel better already.

Early Morning Ironing

This morning I realized the jeans I wanted to wear were still in the dryer from two days ago when I did laundry. I thought about just wearing them wrinkly, but changed my mind after thinking better of it. Wrinkly clothes aren't very professional, after all. So I turned the iron on and quickly ironed my pants. I was so proud of myself. I'm a grown-up!

After I got to work I went into the restroom. While I was in there, I looked down and noticed only my right leg had a nice crease down the front (they're "trouser" jeans, not regular jeans- so I'm not a weirdo for ironing them that way). As a totally random side note, I remember hearing a comedian doing a bit about men and women using the bathroom. He said women always look like they're sitting there waiting for a bus. I think of that all the time now and it always makes me laugh.

Back to the task at hand. So I come out of the bathroom stall and look in the full length mirror. Sure enough, only one pant leg has a perfectly ironed crease down the front. The other side, although not terrible looking, is definitely not finely pressed. Somehow I managed to iron the same pant leg twice. Go me.